Documents filed by their lawyers allege that Moscow has worked to keep its involvement in the plane disaster hidden. (Photo: AP)
The results are expected to shed light on the exact type of missile used to shoot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 on July 17, 2014.
Initial results from a criminal inquiry into the downing of a Malaysia Airlines flight over war-torn eastern Ukraine nearly two years ago will be available within months, Dutch prosecutors have said.
The results are expected to shed light on the exact type of missile used to shoot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 passengers and crew on board, and exactly where it was fired from.
"After this summer, the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) will present the first results of the criminal investigation into the crash of flight MH17," the public prosecutor said in a statement released late Friday.
"It concerns the weapon which was used to shoot down the aircraft and the exact launch site of the weapon," it said, noting that the inquiry was at "a very advanced stage".
However, investigators on the Dutch-led team, which includes experts from Australia, Malaysia, Belgium and Ukraine, were still awaiting information from Moscow about BUK missile installations, it said, noting that they were expecting an answer "within two months".
In October, an international inquiry concluded that the Boeing 777, which was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down by a Russian-made BUK surface-to-air missile fired from a zone held by pro-Russian separatists, but stopped short of saying who was responsible.
Results of the latest investigation will not be published in a report, however, but will be included in a criminal file "which is intended for the hearing of the case in a court or a tribunal," the prosecutor said, indicating this was normal procedure in criminal cases.
Earlier this week, families of six Malaysian crew members filed suit against the airline for negligence and breach of contract, their lawyer said, and the carrier could also face similar action from more MH17 next-of-kin over loss of earnings as well as compensation for the "psychological" trauma of losing loved ones.
Last month, relatives of victims from Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia launched legal action against Russia and its President Vladimir Putin in the European Court of Human Rights, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.
Documents filed by their lawyers allege that Moscow has worked to keep its involvement in the plane disaster hidden.

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THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The latest news on the report into the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in eastern Ukraine last year. All times local. 9:55 p.m. Geoffrey Robertson, a former United Nations war crimes judge, said the Dutch Safety Board report on MH-17 is important because it refutes Russian "lies and propaganda" claiming the Malaysian Airlines flight was shot down by a Ukrainian plane, not by a missile. But he said the families of the victims still don't know what the next step will be in their quest for justice. He says "the families must wait until the Dutch criminal report, which is due at Christmas or shortly afterward, which would try to identify those criminally...

A relative of AirAsia flight QZ8501 passengers weeps as she waits for the latest news on the missing jetliner—(Photo: AP)
An AirAsia plane with 162 people on board went missing en route from Indonesia to Singapore on Sunday after pilots requested a change of flight plan due to bad weather, triggering a massive search in the third major incident this year involving a Malaysian carrier.
There were no Indian nationals on board Flight QZ8501.
Amid fading hopes of finding any survivors, the massive search operation launched to locate the Airbus A320-200 with two Indonesian military aircraft and a helicopter scouring the seas was called off for the day due to bad weather and darkness, 11 hours after the plane disappeared.
The search operation will resume on Monday morning even as some ships were continuing the scouring overnight, officials said.
AirAsia Flight QZ8501 carrying 155 passengers — one British, one Malaysian, one Singaporean, three South Koreans, 149 Indonesians and seven crew members — six Indonesians and a French co-pilot — lost contact with air traffic control at 0724 local time Indonesia.
Sixteen children and one infant were among the passengers on board the plane with the registration number PK-AXC.
Indonesian vice-president Jusuf Kalla, speaking 10 hours after the plane lost contact, expressed deep concern, saying, “It is most possible that it has experienced an accident.”
Contact with the plane, which took off from Surabaya (Indonesia) at 5.20 am local time and was scheduled to land at Singapore’s Changi Airport at 8:30 am, was lost 42 minutes after takeoff. Indonesian officials earlier said the plane was several hours past the time when its fuel would have been exhausted.
There were unconfirmed media reports that a aircraft crashed in the waters of East Belitung, off the east coast of Sumatra. The exact location of the crash site has not been identified, media reports said.
However, Malaysia’s transport minister Liow Tiong Lai dismissed the claims that wreckage of the aircraft had been found. Asked about reports that the missing flight has crashed in Belintung, Mr Liow confirmed the reports to be false.
“There is plenty of speculation that they have found the plane. At this point in time that is not true. We are still looking for the plane,” Mr Liow said.
A statement on AirAsia’s Facebook page said: “AirAsia Indonesia regrets to confirm that flight QZ8501 from Surabaya to Singapore has lost contact with air traffic control at 0724 hrs this morning.”
Indonesian transport ministry official Hadi Mustofa said the plane had asked for an unusual route before it lost contact.
Air Asia said the pilots requested “deviation due to enroute weather before communication with the aircraft was lost while it was still under the control of the Indonesian Air Traffic Control.”
The Indonesia air transportation director said the pilot requested to increase altitude to 38,000 feet from 32,000 feet to “avoid clouds”. Thunderstorms were reported in the area with clouds up to 50,000 feet.
The jet was flying at the regular cruising altitude for most jetliners — 32,000 feet — when the signal was lost, according to flight tracking website Flightradar24. No distress reports came from the plane, officials said.
“At the present time, we unfortunately have no further information regarding the status of the passengers and crew members on board, but we will keep all parties informed as more information becomes available,” the Malaysia-based carrier said.
AirAsia Group CEO Tony Fernandes asked his company to stay strong. “Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers. We must stay strong,” tweeted Mr Fernandes, an ethnic Indian, who set up the budget airlines which now flies to several countries.
“This is my worst nightmare, but there is no stopping,” he said, adding that he is headed to Indonesia.
The last detected position of the missing flight is believed to be between Tanjung Pandan on Belitung island and Kalimantan, Indonesia, according to Indonesia’s director of air transport, Djoko Murjatmodjo.
“The position where contact was lost was between Tanjung Pandan and Pontianak, about 100 nautical miles south-east of Tanjung Pandan,” said Mr Djoko.
Two Indonesian air force planes and a helicopter scoured the seas around the islands of Bangka and Belitung in the Java Sea, across from Kalimantan on Borneo island.
“We have focused all our strength, from the search and rescue agency, the military, police and help from the community as well as the fishermen,” rescue agency chief F.H.B. Soelistyo told reporters.
He said three ships and three planes from Malaysia would join the search tomorrow. Singapore had offered a C130 plane and Australia also offered help.
India has put on standby three ships and a maritime surveillance aircraft for assistance in the search operation. The aircraft was operated by AirAsia Indonesia.
Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) Bangka Belitung said it dispatched one vessel to search for the AirAsia flight.
The pilot of the plane Captain Iriyanto has an experience of 6,100 flying hours.
The loss of contact with the AirAsia plane comes nearly 10 months after the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 carrying 239 people, including five Indians, that went missing on March 8.
Searchers are yet to find any debris from Flight MH370, which officials believe crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.
Another Malaysia Airlines plane MH17 was shot down over Ukraine in July, killing all 298 on board.
AirAsia is popular in the region as a budget carrier. It has about 100 destinations, with subsidiaries in several Asian countries.

Clergy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church take part in a march marking the 1026th anniversary of the Day of Baptism of Kievan. AFP
Black boxes show crash caused by rocket shrapnel; MH17 victims may never be found: Cops
The downing of Malaysian airliner MH17 may constitute a war crime, the UN said on Monday, as explosions and fighting blocked a new attempt by the Dutch and Australian police to reach the crash site in insurgent-held east Ukraine. The unarmed international mission was forced to turn around as heavy bombardment rocked towns close to the site, where the remains of some of the 298 victims still lie more than 10 days after the disaster.
Ukraine’s military confirmed that its forces were engaged in fierce battles against rebels nearby, saying its troops had entered into towns, including Shakhtarsk, just 10 km away. UN high commissioner for human rights Navi Pillay condemned the “horrendous shooting down” of the Malaysian passenger jet in rebel-held territory, and demanded a “thorough, effective, independent and impartial investigation”.
“This violation of international law, given the prevailing circumstances, may amount to a war crime,” she said. The Red Cross has said Ukraine is now in civil war — a classification that would make parties in the conflict liable to prosecution for war crimes. A Ukrainian security official on Monday said that black boxes recovered from downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in rebel-held east Ukraine show shrapnel from a rocket explosion caused the passenger jet to crash. International investigators “indicated that data from flight recorders show that the reason for the destruction and crash of the plane was massive explosive decompression arising from multiple shrapnel perforations from a rocket explosion,” a spokesman for Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, said. Data from the doomed airliner’s black boxes was decrypted in Britain after being handed over to Malaysian officials by pro-Russian rebels controlling the crash site of MH17. Investigators leading the probe in the Netherlands refused to confirm the latest information from Kiev, saying that they were “waiting to get a more complete idea of what happened.” Meanwhile, Dutch police chief Gerard Bouman said that all remains of the 298 people may never be recovered. “I would love to give a guarantee that all the remains will come back, and all possessions, but... I believe the chances are not very good that we will get it all,” he said in a briefing to Parliament in The Hague. Mr Bouman said all next-of-kin had been made aware of the situation, adding it was not even clear how many bodies remained unaccounted for. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday urged Russia’s defence industry to swiftly cut imports as the EU looks set to impose a ban on the sale of weapons and technology over Ukraine. He said that Russia’s arms industry is “definitely” capable of producing everything the country needs at a meeting on how to combat the sanctions. Russia will focus “on speeding up import-substitution efforts in the national defence industry and on the broadest possible switch to domestically-produced materials and parts for special hardware and weapons,” Mr Putin said.

(MENAFN - Kuwait News Agency (KUNA)) The EU Tuesday expressed shock and sadness over the downing of the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 in Donetsk last Thursday and called on the separatist groups in ...

The Ukraine government and the pro-Russia separatists who control the site of the Malaysian plane crash have reached a preliminary agreement to remove the bodies of the victims, a senior Ukrainian official said.
News reports of how the bodies have been decaying for days in the summer sun have ignited outrage worldwide, especially from Holland, home to over half the 298 victims.
Ukraine's emergency officials said today that 196 bodies have been recovered in an operation involving nearly 300 volunteers and rebels.
Ukraine and the separatists accuse each other of firing a surface-to-air missile at Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on Thursday as it flew from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur some 33,000ft above the battlefields of eastern Ukraine. Both deny the charge.
The US has pointed blame at the separatists, saying Washington believes the jet was probably downed by an SA-11 missile from rebel-held territory and "we cannot rule out technical assistance from Russian personnel".
The latest US intelligence assessment suggests that more than one missile system was given to the separatists by the Russians in the last week or so. But both Russia and the rebels vehemently deny any role in downing...

Jamilah Noriah Abang Anuar (right) lost her daughter Ariza and her family.
An entire family of six that had been returning home after three years living abroad was among the 44 Malaysians killed in the MH17 disaster, media reports said on Saturday.
Tambi Jiee, 49, and his wife Ariza Ghazalee, 46, perished along with their four children when the Malaysia Airlines flight went down in eastern Ukraine.
They were reportedly returning to Malaysia after her husband’s three-year posting in Kazakhstan for energy giant Shell, first taking a short European holiday. Images of a wailing Jamilah Noriah Abang Anuar, 72 Ariza’s mother dominated front pages of Malaysian dailies on Saturday. “I lost my daughter and her family in a blink of an eye,” the New Straits Times quoted her as saying from her home in the eastern Malaysian state of Sarawak on Borneo island.
Ariza had posted a photo on Facebook showing the family’s luggage as they prepared to embark from Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport for the flight to Kuala Lumpur. “17 July 2014, starting our new hijrah (journey), Alham-dulillah (praise God),” read the accompanying message. Her son Afzal Tambi also posted his thanks and farewells to friends from Kazakhstan on Thursday. “Before it gets too cheesy, I just want to thank everyone who made it bearable for me to live here and for sharing with me amazing memories to reminisce on.” The latest Malaysia Airlines disaster has rekindled the grief of MH370 relatives who say the new crash bears out their furious criticisms of the nation’s flag carrier and government.
Flight MH17, a Boeing 777-200, went down in strife-torn eastern Ukraine on Thursday with 298 passengers and crew, mostly Dutch citizens. he tragedy has reopened the deep emotional wounds caused by the March 8 disappearance of flight MH370, whose fate remains one of the biggest aviation mysteries ever.
Many of them have repeatedly accused the airline and Malaysian government of withholding information and of suspicious conduct in handling the probe into the disaster. “My heart is breaking for another 295 souls on board, and another 295 families. Now I cannot stop shaking,” said Sarah Bajc, partner of MH370 passenger Philip Wood.

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